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Insulin
Dependent
Diabetes
Trust
 

• 'Human' and Animal insulin - facts and patient's experiences

• Hypoglycaemia and loss of warnings

• 'Dead in Bed' Syndrome or sudden unexplained death

• Changing your insulin

• Changing your insulin

• Personal Importation of beef and pork insulin from the UK

• Personal Importation of beef and pork insulin from the UK

• Pork Insulin Available Online Without a Doctors Letter

• Action times of guman and animal insulins

• Storing of insulin

• 'Human' and Animal Insulin Reviewed - Cochraine Review 2002

• News - maybe important to you!

• Press and other reports

Storing of Insulin

The systematic discontinuation of animal insulins is an important issue for everyone who needs them to maintain their health and wellbeing because they suffer adverse effects when using synthetic ‘human’ insulin. The fear of having to use a type of insulin that causes serious adverse problems has resulted in people building up stocks of beef and/or pork insulins in their home refrigerators. This is hardly a surprising attitude if you can’t use the only insulin that remains available – what other choice is there? But what about the expiry date and how long will stored insulin remains potent and effective at lowering blood glucose levels?

Expiry dates
According to the International Diabetes Institute, which incorporates the World Health Organisation Centre for Diabetes and Health Promotion, insulin manufacturers are required to place an ‘expiry date’ on each container of insulin but this date appears to be a nominal one and not based on available scientific evidence. The expiry date is usually 2 years after manufacture but varies between manufacturers and between countries. [ref1] The date is determined partly by commercial considerations and also allows for a margin of error when storage conditions by the dispenser and consumer are unknown.

Note – the expiry date does mean that you, the patient, would have no legal redress if you used ‘out of date’ insulin and anything went wrong, so IDDT recommends that you follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

Is insulin safe if it is stored for years?

Insulin potency
Potency means the effectiveness of insulin to lower blood glucose and potency decreases with exposure to light, temperature and vibration. This is why correct storage of your insulin is important because in use insulin has been exposed to all these factors and its potency may reduce so affecting blood glucose levels – they are likely to be higher.

The following facts are known [ref1]

1.      The potency of insulin decreases very gradually over time and the degree of reduction depends on the storage conditions.

2.      Insulin should be stored in the dark as exposure to sunlight decreases its biological activity. The optimum storage is in the dark at temperatures between 2 and 8 C. and freezing should be avoided.

3.      If there is a loss of potency as a result of storage at high temperatures for long periods, then the breakdown products of insulin are not harmful in any way – unlike expired antibiotics, for example. So the insulin is safe to use but it may not be fully effective.

This table shows the extremely long periods of time required before the potency is reduced by even small amounts – quite a surprise to most of us!

Time of storage of insulin preparations at various temperatures until biological potency is reduced by 2% and 5% respectively

Information source: ‘Galenics of Insulin’ by J Brange M.Sc et al: [Novo Research Institute, Denmark] Springer-Verlag, 1987

In emergency situations – poverty, floods, earthquakes
Provided insulin is stored appropriately, it may be used for several years and certainly for at least 12 months after the nominated expiry date. This is particularly important when insulin is provided in an emergency situation, as it can be lifesaving. It is a different sort of emergency for my friend in the US and other people who are building up their stocks of animal insulin because they cannot use the only insulin available to them, ‘human’ insulin, but it is for them an emergency. In emergency, it is unimportant whether the potency is 95% or 99% and in the unlikely event of the potency dropping to 90%, adjustment of the insulin dose would overcome the problem.

Ref 1 Information on storage of insulin. Dr M Cohen, July 1996

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